Pages

Sunday, 24 June 2012

Sheath your swords, dOCUMENTA 13 opens in Afghanistan today

National gallery, Kabul, Afghanistan

For the first time, one of the biggest events in the
art world's calendar, dOCUMENTA 13, holds
outside Germany, in addition to its traditional Kassel home shows.

While the
Kassel section opened few weeks ago, 27 artists from 13 countries are gathering today June 24 to July 19, 2012 at
the National Gallery Kabul, and Bamiyanin Afghanistan,. The Kabul and Bamiyan event
is in collaboration with the Goethe Institut, Afghanistan.

Kabul, according to the organizers will
host an exhibition, film series and part of a photo collage whose second half
can be seen in Kassel.

Directed
by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the organisers explains that the 2012 edition
explores spaces and places where rebuilding collapsed interests and recovery
are of immediate priority.

Christov-Bakargiev says “War creates facts, but art, too,
creates fact of a different order, and art has a major role to play in social
processes of reconstruction through imagination. The first documenta opened in
1955 after a terrible period of dictatorship and conflict. Although different
and dissimilar to what has happened in Afghanistan, experiences are shared in
the moment of rethinking one’s society, at the juncture of where art is felt to
be autonomous and an international common language of shared ideals and
practices.”

With a target to attract more than 750, 000 visitors to the
western German town of Kassel over its 100-day run, the main event was
projected to attract more than 245 artists, scientists and curators from 55 different
countries, displaying along a route through the city, winding through art
galleries and churches to more unusual locations such as a cinema, and
outdoors. On the 2012 edition, and the
argument about what art and content, Christov-Bakargiev states: "What some of these
participants do, and what they 'exhibit' at documenta may or may not be art.
However, their acts, gestures, thoughts, and knowledges produce and are
produced by circumstances that are readable by art, aspects that art can cope
with and absorb," explained Christov-Bakargiev to the press on Wednesday.
"The borders between what is art and what is not art are becoming less and
less important."

That is also a concept:
"Documenta is a state of mind."

Work
from anthropologists, biologists, theorists, engineers, political activists, a
hypnotherapist, a psychoanalyst and a zoologist will be included in the show
which deliberately plays with the question of what is art.Visitors expecting a fun,
cultured day out could find themselves instead challenged though, as the
event's artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev explained that
"documenta in Kassel is intentionally uncomfortable, incomplete, nervously
lacking.”"I think confusion is really
wonderful," she added. "What these participants do
and what they exhibit at documenta may or not be art," said the US-born
Christov-Bakargiev. "The boundary between what is art and what is not has
become less important."Participants include Germany's
Rosemarie Trockel, who erected a "House for Pigs and People" at the
1997 edition, and South African painter and film-maker William Kentridge. China's Song Dong will unveil a
garbage heap that has already been completely colonised by freshly grown grass
while Frenchman Pierre Huyghe will be showing off a compost heap.An ambitious plan to display El
Chaco, the world's second heaviest meteorite weighing 37 tonnes, was eventually
abandoned. Instead, the attempt will be documented.Kassel, in the central state of
Hesse, hosts the world-famous documenta
art fair every five years. German President Joachim Gauck was
there to mark the occasion, arriving early on Saturday. He was greeted by
crowds of excited art-fans waiting in one of the city's main squares before
taking a tour of the Fridericianum museum which is hosting part of the documenta. Christov-Bakargiev's concept of art is most closely allied to
"antagonism." Her aversion to everything traditional, conventional,
to the art exhibited at classic institutions, is so pronounced that everything
else is secondary. This is evident in her writings and speeches.

The participating artists,
however, are much less theoretical. At the beginning of documenta, it's fair to
say that Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev herself appears to be a central piece of
the art spectacle. But not so much so that the show collapses under the weight
of her theoretical constructs.

hristov-Bakargiev invited 160 artists to Kassel. Tino Sehgal,
the London-born artist with an Indian father who currently resides in Berlin,
is one of them. A choreographer and economist as well as professional artist by
trade, Sehgal creates "a fleeting work of the art world and works
consistently to produce the non-material" in his performances, at least
according to the curators. And so his works play to Christov-Bakargiev's
conceptions. Visitors look at, listen to and reacquaint with their own selves.

1 comment:

What an interesting blog, introduced by a thought-provoking photo. The unusual wall painting of the dwellings is also a strangely modern interpretation. Something like this hieroglyphic view of a park by Swiss painter Paul Klee, http://EN.WahooArt.com/A55A04/w.nsf/OPRA/BRUE-8LT475. The image can be seen at wahooart.com who can supply you with a canvas print of it.